Tag: spoken word

Let’s Make Music

Retro microphone on stage in restaurant. Blurred background

I wanna make music
tonight
I wanna sing
for you
Don’t ask me to metaphor into bunny rabbits
cause I ain’t up here to do tricks for you
I am up here to sing
for you
I am here
to make music
to make
melody
you ask me
why I don’t show my face
why my performance can’t be seen by yo physical eyes
but this here aint no show
I got no tricks of the trade to show you
these words aint cropped to fit your opinion
they aint photo shopped to enhance your feelings
but I know how visual you people are
how you wonder about signs and wonders
so you wonder
why I won’t baptize my poetry
behind the lens of your cameras
have I fallen from the horse of couplets and closed forms?
maybe
I’ve just C-sectioned my Spoken Word to reveal my insides
besides
I’ve got to have some kind of gut
to stand up here and strip for you
just let me be real for you
let me calm you
let these words heal you
and let’s make music
a cleft
a time signature
a note
a rest
a song
a stepping stone
to play just the right scripture
to guide us back to the music sheet
just let me stand here
let me be here
and
just let me sing
for you

Grown Enough

pexels-pixabay-248021
Photo by Pixabay
pexels-pixabay-248021
Photo by Pixabay

She has a secret

that she just does not want to grow up

If she could just make it to 21

drink her liver half-dead

and tell Hennessy he’s the one

he makes her forget she’s had too much

but maybe she just hasn’t had enough

to make her realize that her friends are gone 

when nothing’s left

and the taste she feels on her tongue

is the Similac on her breath

telling her stomach to cough up the dance 

she just had with death 

Look sis, I know you think it cool

but your stomach’s not fit for this kind of food

and that boy on the corner ain’t in love with you

You are just a lot more convenient than McDonald’s

cause he can have his way with you

and you’re probably just hearing this for the first time

cause nobody’s ever told you it always hurts the first time

This

grown-up stuff

She said she just wants to be

grown enough

Her ambition is for time to sit still

Never reaching the point of crazy debt 

and large bills

If she could always stay somewhere between 

Dora the Explorer and pink heels

maybe this lump in her throat she would’ve never had to feel

If someone could have just told her that growing up is over-rated

And in this world without YAH you’re a nobody 

who’s never made it

Your childhood crying away cause you played it

Cause you rushed yourself into a place 

that’s not so puffed up

Trust little girl when I tell you

You’ll never quite be just

grown enough

Starving Contentment

tumblr_ma8s4s6utv1rfji3ko1_500

Like music swallows its bass inside the belly of the loud speakers their stomachs growl,
but they ain’t really hungry….
they just come to see what all the commotion is like….
they wanna know what all this poetry stuff is but……
they ain’t really hungry……
they just wanna see how pretty her pain is.

Revolutionary Youth

tumblr_lnrw6r2DOr1qmnxqeo1_500

 

I notice that young people like to engage into conscious conversation nowadays….
a mind heavy with questions a…..
bed of regret too slippery to hold onto any longer we linger on the brink of activism and righteous revolution but…..
like wild bulls in a net we are caught ironically by the same thirst for consciousness…….
breathtaking words and artificial intelligence that sound almost like life….
a quick fix of metaphors glossed over with the shine of illuminated intelligence
a mere ignorance in disguise
it is my hope
that before we start to think
we may first search the graveyard of our ancestors closets where we buried our minds
because it is evident….
that though we are inebriated of the euphoria of information….
we have yet to be informed.

Cousin

black-girl

She walks but she sleeps…
she sleeps her way down 35th street,

Chicago’s State Streets.
The project life booming
lights
camera
action,
whistles blowing the street life calling
undressing her body with its eyes
for she blooms into this new body just as suddenly as the sky rises
she rises
into womanhood…….
since that first flow of blood sent hormones racing against waves she sleeps
with those waves
feelings of pretend love from the streets
swallow that pill of ignorance,
dazed in ecstasy
she sleeps.

4e1c472d60936.preview-300

 
Hennessy bottles, homo sags and Baphomet signs,

he sleeps
getting this paper either on the basketball court or the recording studio he stays true to the streets, so he thinks.
Blind hormones and rap songz creating another generation of sleepers
too bad he doesn’t know
that by the age of 10 he’s already red listed as one of NYPD’s takers.
polished A-k 47’s eagerly await just 8 more years until it’s their turn to accidentally
shoot away what consciousness he’s got left.
But he sleeps
and she sleeps
living dreams to the fullest only to never realize that it was just a dream
living life to the fullest only to die
wake up and not live.
never giving ourselves the opportunity to realize that sleep is just the cousin of death.
Because the almighty never sleeps

and his righteous angels you see they don’t sleep
and the messiah died
dying physically
only to wake up from this sort of temporary sleep because he was ordained to never sleep again.
cause you can only live once…..physically
your body’s life fading away in the distance
rats and insects tearing away at past dreams of disobedience
but will you ever wake up from this past slumber and really live?
or will you sleep,
and sleep,
and sleep…
to become more acquainted
with the cousin of death.